Arabesque
by Covalent Bond
Summary: "Sweetheart, you have no idea what you're up against." While trying to help her husband, Temperance Brennan navigates a complex web of allies and enemies. As the truth unravels she finds she can't trust anyone, and that includes the people she loves the most... Major spoilers for Recluse in the Recliner.
1. Nightmares

**Spoiler Alert:** _Major spoilers for **Recluse in the Recliner** _are included. Although for the moment I am only incorporating the events at the very 'end' of the episode (and that includes the opening flash-forward scene), those scenes contain huge spoilers for anyone who doesn't want to know what happened.

~Q~

**** Mega-Angst Warning ****

At the time it first aired (May 2014) this episode was so emotionally intense that I needed to process it and I do that through writing. This first chapter is intense. It actually reads worse than the episode in some ways, especially because there was no easy 'fix' at the time that I started it. The point in continuing was not to 'rescue' anyone but rather, to explore all the astounding coincidences and connections I've observed over the years. That's why the title is _Arabesque_, because it suggests the intersecting story-lines that have been all but begging to be noticed.

So.

This chapter covers events at the end of Recluse in the Recliner, and then we're going completely AU after that in terms of how this Arabesque unravels and reveals a solution.

What does Pelant have in common with the Gravedigger? What does the Gravedigger have to do with Max Keenan? And how might bad guys from days gone by provide the key that frees Booth from the Conspiracy's destructive grip...?

~Q~

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_**Arabesque**_

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_An ornamental design consisting of intertwined flowing lines, originally found in Arabic or Moorish decoration._

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**1\. Nightmares**

* * *

**Thursday**  
**20:26 hours**

_...The trouble with nightmares is that they seem so real when you're locked inside them. Everything feels real, even the craziest, most nonsensical things such as handing over your beloved into someone else's care knowing you're leaving her, knowing that you're doing something that might get you killed. Knowing she may never see you again..._

"Dad, take Christine. I've got to go."

The rushed words tangled and tumbled out of her mouth as she shoved her precocious preschooler into her grandfather's arms.

"Mama!" Christine protested, leaning out of Max Keenan's grasp and trying to snag her mother's neck.

She had been quiet in the car, but perhaps that was due to the lateness of the hour (from a young child's point of view). Christine had spoken very little since Brennan woke her from sleep and then rushed around the bright, yellow bedroom, scooping up precious stuffed animals and books, clothes and a blanket, gathering them and stuffing them all frantically into a large duffel bag. Rubbing her sleepy eyes, the little girl watched the process of her entire existence being packed up with mostly quiet confusion. Too young to tell time, still the fact that it was past bedtime (because she'd been asleep and was still wearing pajamas) and that all her favorite things seemed to be disappearing into the large bag, signaled her that something unusual was occurring. Her mother's hasty activity, unnatural silence and unspoken terror made the little girl whimper. "Mama? We goin' sumwhere?"

"Yes, Sweetheart. We're going to Grampa Max."

"Daddy, too?"

"No. Daddy's staying here."

"Why?"

Her favorite question, of late. (Brennan's too, right up until now, when she couldn't possibly explain what was about to befall them all. Not to a two year old, no matter how brilliant.)

"Because..." Her heart and voice breaking, Brennan drew a breath, tried to sound calm. "There's a problem with our house so Daddy's going to stay here and try to fix it. Okay?"

"Okay." Christine accepted the explanation with complete trust, as any dearly beloved child would.

But someday, she _would_ question it. Christine would grow up and someday, she would wonder if she should forgive her parents for the mistakes they'd made. That is, if she still had two parents to question.

Stifling another sob Brennan looked around the room with tear-stained terror, knowing Booth was planning to damage it. With the C-4. With showers of bullets. And he wanted her gone, so she wouldn't be there when their life was torn down to the very foundation. She bundled their innocent daughter into a light jacket, carrying her and the huge bag swiftly down the hall, down the stairs, finding Booth at the kitchen island with his knife trimming C-4 into putty for shaping.

"Play doh," Christine murmured longingly.

"Hi, baby girl." Booth turned, his eyes bright and hard as they met his wife's but they softened when he looked at Christine. "I love you."

"Daddy, you comin'?"

"No, baby." He glanced away, his gaze drifting to a cabinet in the corner of the living room. "Bones, get the video."

She knew exactly which video he meant. Shuddering, she could only beg him to leave with her and yet the words wouldn't emerge. "Booth."

"Bones..." The harshness was coming back. "Thirty minutes. _Please_."

"I love you." She darted toward him, pressing frantic kisses on his lips and cheek because she didn't hate him and the thought of those being the last words she ever said was unbearable. "I love you, Seeley Booth."

And then he was pushing her back. Begging, harshly. "_Go!_"

_"I hate you for making me walk away."_ She'd said it just minutes ago, having come to understand in the final moments that he'd brought this about, somehow, and he wouldn't let her help him. He wanted her safe in another man's care. Turning until Booth was behind her, she heard the knife cutting through the explosive putty again as she walked blindly through her beautiful home for the last time and retrieved the recordings they'd each made for Christine.

Their last messages to her.

Just like Brennan's own mother had done, so many years ago.

Now at her father's door Brennan was doing the same thing, pushing her daughter away for her own good, forcing the child into a state of abandonment with nothing but a pair of video recordings to explain that they'd loved her. Just like her own parents had done, now twenty three years ago. And also, once before then ... when Temperance Brennan herself was only two years old and still named Joy.

Max helped her by shushing Christine, his own level of alertness strained by the fear driving his daughter. He knew, almost didn't need to ask but did anyway. "Tempe, what's happening."

"They're coming after Bo—" She broke off, mindful of Christine's frightened ears. "He's alone. I have information that could help him, I've gotta go."

"Call him," Max urged.

"No, he won't answer because his phone is probably tapped. He's _alone_." Terror stopped up the words again; she was wasting precious seconds standing here.

Shifting Christine's weight as well as his own so he could cradle her closer, Max reached up a hand automatically to soothe one of his girls. Christine snuggled into his warm arms, but Temperance stepped back, her jaw set in rigid lines of resolve. She wouldn't be comforted. "Sweetheart, you have no idea what you're up against."

"They're going to kill him." She whispered it, trying not to let her fear infect their daughter.

"They'll kill you, too. Tempe, stay here. I'll keep you safe."

Fiercely, she resisted. "I love him, Dad. I can't. No, just ... take Christine. What we talked about." Was it only a couple of hours ago, when she'd stopped by to tell him what happened at the confirmation hearing? And he'd warned her then, offered her a secure meeting location. Told her where and told her when, if it was needed and how certain he was that it might be. Very soon.

"You know where to meet us."

"Yes." She wiped tears from her eyes, leaning over to kiss Christine. "I love you, sweetheart. I'm going to help Daddy. Okay? Daddy needs my help tonight."

Sorrow deepened the lines on his face as a choking Max ground out his own worst nightmare. "We didn't want this for you, but I should have known."

Sharply, she questioned him. "_We?_ Known what?"

"Your mother and I learned it the hard way. You cut off the head of a hydra, two more grow back in its place."

~Q~

**Thursday**  
**20:47 hours**

_...Recurring nightmares, the ones that play over and over, are inescapable. You awaken from it thinking it's finally over, only to find yourself right back in it the next time you fall asleep..._

All she has is a pistol when Temperance Brennan arrives at her own house to find a war in progress. Shattering wood and glass, rattling roars of gunfire penetrate the night and she sees lights on in her neighbor's clean and tidy houses, figures huddling in terror near windows, eyes peeking out to fearfully watch the flashes flaring in the windows of the Booth/Brennan residence. Speculating that someone has probably already called the Metro police on shots fired in their upscale suburban neighborhood, she takes a moment to bind up her hair before dashing carefully from her car to enter the fray through her shattered front door.

Her right hand is steady as she leads with the gun, but her little 9 mm semi-automatic only holds nine bullets plus a single extra clip. Eighteen shots total. It won't be enough against an assault rifle that can spray eighteen bullets in less than a second. She knows she's got nothing but surprise on her side but the fact that they are still shooting tells her Booth is still holding his own. That means there's hope, that possibly her unexpected entry will give her desperate mate a more secure advantage against three heavily armed and well-trained expert soldiers.

She rounds the entry hall into the living room and sees a black-garbed man, helmeted and vested, weapon up as he tracks away from her. By his stature and gait she can tell he isn't Booth and that's all she needs to know. His back to her, he doesn't know she's there. Beyond him is Booth, on the ground and rolling away out of sight. Aiming for the intruder's only vulnerable spot Brennan squeezes the trigger, watching a spray of arterial blood announce her target's penetration as the metal missile slams into his cervical spine and rips open one of his carotids on its way out. The soldier drops, his weapon clattering, and the only stop she makes on his account is to kick the rifle away from his outreached hand. Just in case he lives, but she's sure he won't.

It's quiet and acrid, the scent of blood, charring and burnt C-4 assaulting her nose. From Booth she hears labored breathing. Though she tries to be cautious and wary, the pull of him brings her to his side in a reckless blur because all she can hear is that he's hurt. He's on the ground, rising weakly, exhausted, and even more tense now that he's seen her.

"Uh, I'm all right," he gasps. But he doesn't sound sure, his body pumping so much adrenaline that he knows only of his wounds in an intellectual way. He thinks he's fine because there's no pain yet to tell him otherwise. "Think I'm all right," he amends. Because he can't get up.

"You're hit!" Left leg. Right abdomen, very low and near the anterior superior iliac spine. Just inside his hip, which appears uninjured: behind that might be some intestinal involvement (descending colon, high risk of infection). Her eyes shift back to his thigh, noting the wound looks oblique, a clean pass through the vastis lateralis muscle that would cause some difficulty walking in the short term but bone and major vessels all seem intact.

His breathing is harsh, gasping more than he should be as he tries to warn her. "There's another one in the house."

Glancing around, listening to Booth and trying to decipher if he has a hidden chest injury she hasn't spotted yet, Brennan asks the question that brought her here. "Are these two right-handed?"

He gives her a quizzical look, even winded as he is. "Why?" It's a gasp, bringing to mind another fight years ago when she tried to instruct Booth to strike his opponent in the weakest area, a kidney the man couldn't guard. Booth had gasped a question instead of an answer then, too, just as battered and bewildered. But they've both come a long way together since then and even though he doesn't understand her reasons, he answers without further hesitation. "Yes."

"'Cause there's one that's left-handed," she explains quickly. "That's what I came here to tell you."

It's an excuse, they both know it. He looks up at his partner (long before she was his wife, she has always been his back-up, his ace-in-the-hole, his fiercest champion), and knows there's no use in trying to send her away. He's too weak, anyway. And she's too loyal. "Just get me over there, in the back."

"Come on." With a grunt of effort, his powerful partner grabs his arms and begins to drag all 200 pounds of pure muscled man around the island until he's more safely tucked out of sight. He grunts, too. From pain.

She knows he's hit somewhere else but it's not visible and he seems stable. But she knows. And he knows she does.

For the moment Booth is still alert enough to be tactical. As he props himself up, he groans another command. "Hand me the gun, right there."

Brennan lunges for the pistol spun just out of reach, passing it to him and in the blink of an eye their respite is over. Bullets spatter just overhead, shattering more glass and splintering the walls, chipping the polished granite counter-top just above them. This is what fear tastes like, Brennan notes in a burst of clarity.

It's dry.

Her tongue is nearly glued to the top of her mouth in a hot, tacky mass that she can't move to form words. Every sound fractures into constituent parts of trigger clicks and bullet hits, Booth's answering shots and her unthinking lunge over crunching chunks of glass and plaster for the shotgun she sees laying two feet away behind what's left of her octagonal maple end table.

This nightmare has to end.

Fingers closing, she is rising to defend her mate like she always has and she always will. The double-barrel blast knocks the assailant backwards. (Delta Force commando or not, no one can defy physics.) A pause for a second, to note he seems still.

So she's back at Booth, determined to make him tell her. "How bad is it?"

"It's just a scratch," he insists, still belied by half breathlessness. "Behind you!"

She turns again, ready to shoot, but this time the shotgun fails her. The Delta has a knife, whipped out into his left hand, and he sees her as an obstacle to be dispatched. He spares no mercy for her gender, sweeping the shotgun from her hands with a violent pair of roundhouse kicks that disarm and then destroy her balance in rapid succession. Brennan feels herself flung across the room in a tangle and knows a knife is coming to cut her up but before she can turn and right herself she hears a thud and a tumble.

Then a grunt, as she's turning over.

A crackle of violently twisting vertebrae, like shearing open a head of crisp iceberg lettuce.

And another soft sound of total collapse.

Dazed, she finds her footing just in time to note Booth's prone form is slumped over her would-be killer. It's not Booth's neck that has been shattered but he's not moving. Why isn't he moving?! "Oh, Booth."

The last intruder is flat on the floor under Booth, his head flopped sideways into a horrific state of bonelessness. She rolls Booth over and away, trying to control the movement as he flips over his left shoulder and falls onto his back. No sound, no movement, but there's blood covering his right shoulder rapidly now. Blood that wasn't there before.

God, what has he done? He moved! Oh God, he moved when he shouldn't have.

To get in the way.

Risking his own life to kill that man.

To save her...

"Booth!" _No no no_,_ not this! Not again!_

This is what horror tastes like: a surge of gastric fluid climbing up the back of her throat with ragged talons.

_She's been in this nightmare before, lived it, watched him die in it..._

The scent of blood and the pungent punch of gunpowder brings it back just as surely as the slick black spot spreading across his chest and the warm wet pressed under her palm. Too familiar, too much a nightmare she has often repeated in her sleep. Lately he is the one who wakes her and reminds her it was all in the past, that now he is here beside her in the night (alive, whole, wholly hers) and she would lay back down in his strong arms.

_God, please, I want to wake up. Please, Booth, wake me up!_

"Booth!" He can't wake her because she's not dreaming. She's trying to wake him, instead. "No."

There's a dent in the vest that protected his chest. Unzipping the Kevlar vest, she pulls it apart to reveal the blood and the injury she couldn't see before, now made obvious with a freshly broken rib stabbing into his lung. It was just a crease and a cracked rib before, but then he'd moved and the exertion broke it. And drove the broken shards deeply into his lung.

"Oh my God," she sobs. All for her, he's done it again and he is dying again because he loves her. "Oh my God. Don't you die."

_Don't **do** this to me, Booth!_

This time his arms are slack and his eyes closed, while her eyes are open and the nightmare is so much worse. Her life and home are in ashes and her husband (the very thought of him, of _husband_, makes him so much more precious now and this moment all the more terrifying because he) is dying all over again.

And she's angry that he put himself at risk but knows she would have done the same. Love is irrational. "Don't you die."

The ruined house, she doesn't care. Such cruel destruction she has witnessed in the past and though it is a setback, most things can be replaced. Yes, even his great-grandfather's Bavarian cuckoo clock and even her 7th century Moche vessels. (Well, not really. Moche ceramics are priceless but in the end they were only mud, made precious by the mold of human hands and the passage of time.)

Under her hands, her precious partner is so still and nothing can ever replace him. She sobs, trying to call him back to her. "Don't you die!"

A command, an order, a plea. She can't bear to live this twice and yet she has no choice. He needs help, _she_ needs help.

Taking her hands off his bleeding wounds, she scrambles to find one of the phones that might still be functioning. In her unthinking haste she forgets both the cell phone in her own pocket and her assumption just minutes ago that the neighbors have probably already called. Instead, she wastes precious seconds in a frantic search through the wreckage of her kitchen to locate a land line, only to find the line is dead. No dial tone means they'd cut the line before entering. The intruders clad in tactical gear had come into her home with fatal intentions.

With a sudden surge of chaotic noise, the DC Metro police were now arriving and bursting through the door, responding to a sudden rash of shots-fired calls from the frantic neighbors. What they find is mayhem, a man down and his bloodstained, tearstained wife begging them for help. They're on their radios and fanning out over the devastated room, taking in the scene and discussing it with garbled whispers she can't hear.

An ambulance is dispatched already and as emergency responders swarm the scene Brennan dares to hope this will turn out better than that night at the Checkerbox. They run their IV lines and prep him rapidly for transport. _It's going to be fine, he'll be okay._ She holds on to that hope as long as it takes for them to load Seeley Booth's gurney into the ambulance and shut the door in her face.

"No!" Her fists slam into the metal shutting her out, demanding entrance despite the rumble of the engine starting and exhaust fumes covering her in petroleum soot. Not again, not again. "He needs me, let me in!"

_This is how it happened the last time._

A uniformed officer, silver badge glinting in the streetlights, takes her arm and pulls her back. "You can't go with him."

"Why not? I'm his wife!"

"Ma'am, we need you to stay here and answer some questions."

_That's why it happened the last time._ They held her for questions because she'd shot Pam Noonan and by the time she finally reached the hospital... Panic subsumes into fury because the _last_ time... The last time, someone hid Booth away and told her he was dead. The last time, they were both betrayed. Horror at the separation, at the repetition of an FBI that can't be trusted and life-threatening injuries and—

Not again! _No_, she will not permit anything to keep her away.

Spinning, she bolts for her own car and the officer spins with her. "Ma'am! Ma'am, you can't go with — wait!"

He tries following to catch her arm but Brennan's resolve is faster. She throws herself behind the wheel and the tires are squealing after her husband within seconds. They are _married_, damn it! He'd insisted, she'd resisted but Booth was right and this is the only comfort she can count on. As his wife, they can not deny her access the way they did to his "partner."

"I'm his wife, he's my husband." It's an anthropological trope: Wives have status that partners can never hope to attain. "They _have_ to let me in."

Chanting this mantra she tailgates the ambulance all the way to the hospital and when she gets there, they still won't let her stay at Booth's side. A nurse tries to stop her. "He's my _husband_," she insists. "They wouldn't let me ride with him."

The nurse shows surprise, sensing at once the strangeness of this lapse in protocol. The repetitious, nightmare quality of this lapse in social norms. "Why? They usually—" She's going to agree at the oddity of it, which makes the nurse a reluctant ally and that's enough, especially because the door is opening so Brennan darts by. "—Hey! You can't go back there!"

Brennan barrels back through labyrinthine hallways, searching and not stopping until another nurse halts her by force. But she sees him, at least. If she stays, she will have to witness another surgery and _that_, finally, is what terrifies her too much to continue on her determined course. She allows herself to be firmly escorted back to the waiting room...

...Where the nightmare doesn't end, it just goes into an exhausted stupor, a calming stasis that dulls her senses so much that she's not prepared for the next horror that leaps out.

~Q~

**Friday**  
**06:15 hours**

_...Novel nightmares arise at the most unexpected moments. Just when you think everything is fine, it shatters you with shock that nothing is what you thought it was. The nightmare twists and turns like a lashing serpent, giving you more pain when you learn that even seeming friends can actually be enemies._

_The hidden ones are the most dangerous..._

Brennan held herself together long enough to call Angela and wait for her friend's arrival. She managed to hold on a few seconds longer as the parade of supporting companions entered, Angela leading the way and coming right up to enfold her into loving arms. As the banding, binding compassion closed her in, Brennan's bravery broke with tears and grief and fear that could not end even with her friends surrounding her.

It wasn't over, it wouldn't be over until she was sitting beside him and hearing him beg her for more hospital pudding.

The next few hours repeat that distant past, the same agony of suspension that she'd been through before on that night he was shot at the Checkerbox. She passed the time with fitful naps and intermittent pacing, circling for another desperate sip from the drinking fountain because fear tastes like dehydration. Then back again to sit between Angela and Cam while Hodgins hovered on their left and Sweets sulked beside him. Across the aisle, Caroline Julian rested with them as well, a new variant in this ancient drama.

A door finally opened, expelling a doctor who glanced around and nodded towards the haggard woman he'd updated once already, about three hours ago.

She leaped up, hoping to hear the words that would, finally, give this nightmare a better outcome than that last one. "Is he alive?"

"Yes, and he's out of danger."

Relief deflated her, as if a plug had been pulled and all tension drained until she was nearly limp from lingering exhaustion. But still, the nagging fear reminded her that the nightmare hadn't ended yet (it wouldn't until she had the proof of a pudding cup in his hand). Relentless unrest pushed her back into a demanding mood. "I need to see him." Undaunted by protocol or politeness, she tried to push past yet again.

Hesitantly, as if unpracticed in this regard, the doctor spoke once more. "There is one problem, Doctor Brennan."

Warily, picking up on his mood, she halted. "What kind of problem?"

He shifted his weight, and dropped his reassuring gaze because now, it wasn't such good news and he was loathe to be the one to tell her. This unpleasant business he was perfectly happy to delegate. "Someone will be out in a minute to talk to you. Until then, I think it's important—"

Between body language (which she now could read thanks to Booth's expert instruction over nearly ten years) and her own desperation, Brennan had heard enough. No more stalling, no more obfuscation. The door behind him that had clicked closed with his entry into the waiting area now opened again and she seized the opportunity just that fast.

The physician's reluctance turned to panic as he must have seen the cruelty inherent in letting her go in unprepared, and his own ethics finally overrode his discomfort with whatever it was that he didn't want to tell her. She'd sensed he was trying to warn her and that was warning enough. "Doctor Brennan, wait! WAIT!"

She was through, racing through the curtained alcoves containing ambulatory patients, darting past private rooms where more emergent or virulent cases languished; past the 'crash' rooms where life-and-death battles played out; through another door into a quieter area for recoveries. Breathing hard, aware of the shortage of time, Brennan found a nurse's station.

"My husband just came out of surgery, can you tell me where he is? Seeley Booth."

"Your husband?"

"Yes." She extended her wrist, showing the matching wrist band that marked her as his spouse and therefore entitled to receive information.

Squinting at the name and number, the nurse typed and within seconds had the information Brennan had been begging to have for hours now. "Room 413, fourth floor. Take the elevators down on the left, then a right once you get to the fourth floor."

"Thank you!" Bolting again, Brennan ran the rest of the way, finding his door within minutes of exiting the elevator.

Once outside his room, she glanced in and felt warmth finally — _finally!_ — spreading over her limbs. He was there, propped up in bed and heavily bandaged, but even from here she thought he looked surprisingly good (all things considered). "Booth!"

Then, at the left edge of the doorway she detected movement and when she'd taken two steps closer the movement resolved into the figures of two dark-suited agents with golden FBI badges displayed. That, in itself, was far outside the norm; for she'd never seen any agents displaying badges in all her years of working closely with the FBI. Field agents did not display badges, office agents didn't either ... but these two stepped forward in an immediate show of glinting gold authority.

"Why are you here?" Worry warred with relief to see the back-up but in the end worry won over her limbic system, activating it to set every nerve back into high-alert status. "Is someone still after Booth?"

Hearing her voice (or the rising level of returning panic) alerted the man in the bed. Booth's eyes flickered, his voice faint and rasping with hope. "Bones..."

The nightmare spun them around then. Deputy Director Stark sidled forward next, with the same odd clarion warning that every single damn authority figure had been giving her since Booth entered medical care. "Doctor Brennan, wait!"

Wait for _what_. Confusion and fury ignited in her again as yet another incident of nonsensical stonewalling blocked her. She turned back towards Booth. Wait for _nothing_, she would not be deterred another moment. Another step forward, only to be halted by two messages slamming into her consciousness:

Stark's piercing panic. "You _can't_ be here, Doctor Brennan!"

And Booth's handcuffed right wrist.

It was like being plunged underwater, colors bleeding together and sounds muffled. She could ask the question but no answer would ever penetrate the sloshing waves tossing her around like an unanchored vessel in stormy seas. "Why did you handcuff him?! What's going on?"

No, no. None of the nightmares ever ended this way.

"Booth killed three FBI Agents who were coming to serve a warrant on him."

It was the water that drowned out the sense of what he was saying. Had to be. Brennan shook her head as if to shake out the liquid that prevented her from hearing him properly. "FBI Agents?!"

In tactical gear?

With semi-automatic assault rifles?

And did the FBI routinely cut phone and power-lines before entering homes?

Did they pull knives?

"Those men tried to _kill_ him. He was defending himself."

Flinching is a sign of a nerve being struck. Booth had warned her to look for it prior to interrogations and though she wasn't looking Brennan spotted it now: the Deputy Director of the FBI flinched because of what she'd said. She'd hit something, knocked something loose, little knowing this was how the very first nightmare began.

"Take Doctor Brennan into custody for questioning."

Icy water, like her head and whole body was pushed under. Shivers raced over her skin as the horror took hold. Arrested, kept away, separated, framed, hung up high on the wall of the FBI's Most Wanted...

**_"Sweetheart, you have no idea what you're up against."_**

"No! No, no I need to stay with him!" She tried to go forward, felt both arms wrenched backwards by force and her body dragged farther away. _What's happening, oh God, what— I don't understand!_ Broken thoughts sliced through her mind like blades, cutting her reason away, leaving her with nothing but a sea of limbic terror as men in authority dragged her away. "Booth!"

_No, **no,**_ **_NO!_** Struggling wildly, flashes of ancient abductions plunged into her mind, the container she'd kept the memories locked into now shattering as every nightmare that she'd ever lived through all converged into one hydra of horror. "Let go of me!" Locked in a windowless cell, locked in a trunk, locked in a buried car, locked in a prison cell. Booth dead, Booth hidden, Booth gone forever. "_Booth!_"

"Get her _out_!" Stark hissed like a serpent, his own fear released by hers.

"Booth!" He's the one who saves her.

"Booth!" He's the one who needs saving but they won't let her.

With no Booth there's no one to save her, either. "Let go of me!" Fear infected the room, swirled around them but the two huge agents managed to overwhelm her resistance and wrestle her to the door. As the separation yawned wider, her struggles increased to near hysteria. Temperance Brennan actually thought she was losing her mind as all control was stripped away from her and she was dragged away by the nightmares of her past. "Booth!"

Screaming, sobbing, she didn't even know what she was saying but her hysteria had infected Stark. He roared. _"Get her **out**!_"

It was the last thing she heard.

They were in the hallway, both men dragging her, pulling her arms back so violently that it hurt and she felt the cuffs clicking cold and tight against her wrists, the door shutting black and blocking the light. Blocking her way to Booth. "Stop it! Help! Let go of me!" Screaming, falling, kicking, being held down...

And then she felt the hot burning in her thigh. Hot, her veins on fire, a torrent barreling through her like a lahar that smothered and buried her alive. Drugged. Sedated.

At their mercy.

~Q~

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**Episodes referenced:**  
The Woman in the Garden  
The Woman in Limbo

The Wannabe in the Weeds  
The Pain in the Heart


	2. Arrests

**Author Sets the Stage:** This humble fan fiction writer has no idea how the Bones writers will sort this out or what they ultimately have in mind. I'm also unsure (at this point) how I will be able to rescue Booth. This is not quite that kind of story. Rather, this is more of a Pandora's box kind of story that the Bones writers opened when they tossed the words "_Major Conspiracy in the FBI_" out there where Max Keenan could hear it. All along, he's noticed little parallels that could be interpreted as "signs of conspiracies" if you squint at them just right. As it turns out, he's quite skilled at squinting.

If you recall, he also used to be a science teacher...

The past episodes of Bones are like pieces of a tangram puzzle. Arrange them one way, you'll get whatever the Bones writers ultimately present. Arrange them another way, you'll get _this_ story. An Arabesque.

~Q~

* * *

_**Arabesque**_

* * *

_A complicated decorative design made with many lines that curve and cross each other._

* * *

**2\. Arrests**

* * *

**Friday**  
**08:33 hours**

She couldn't move.

Slow and thick her thoughts moved, like viscous lava, like pāhoehoe pillows clogging the pathways where her rapid thoughts normally raced through unimpeded. There was a real pillow under her head, too flat and its case too coarse to be comfortable. Not the smooth and silky high thread count that she ordinarily woke to, and she was cold.

Shivering under an icy sheet.

And Booth wasn't in bed with her.

Brennan blinked her eyelids open in slow motion, becoming painfully aware now of lethargy and near paralysis; of confusion over waking to beige walls devoid of ornamentation. Not her bed, not her room, not her home at all. If not at home then where was she? Fuzzy thoughts were the result of fuzzy vision, everything slightly out of focus and ... words wouldn't assemble themselves in the proper order.

A bed with metal rails. Rustling papers and murmurs; pinging beeps, slow and familiar sounds that ticked away the rhythm of someone's quickening pulse.

A hospital room. The pings ponged faster, repeating the pulses of _her_ quickening heartbeat.

What happened?

Nightmares. Burning, blood, Booth. Her throat raw, from screaming. Her body aching, from being violently subdued in a hospital hallway. Tears leaking, because the nightmares hadn't ended.

"She's waking up."

A man's voice, one she didn't recognize. The monitor's sounds paced faster still. Moving her head slowly and only just far enough to bring the speaker into view, she saw two large men in black with glinting gold shields and stony faces. "Get Stark," one of them said. The other left the room, and the first one came closer to her. "I'm sorry, Doctor Brennan. You left us no choice."

"Where'th Booth..." She could barely speak, her tongue thickened by the drugs they'd given her.

"He's fine. You need to stay calm."

"Need thee him, pleathe."

There was no malice in him, just a blunt statement of fact. "That isn't going to happen."

Seconds lagged while her clogged thoughts attempted to slide past the blockage holding them back. She couldn't understand _why_ she couldn't understand, until a dim recognition came trickling through that the drug's effects must have rendered her brain useless.

"Wha' drug," she mumbled.

The dark shape bending over her betrayed his own confusion. "I'm sorry, I didn't get that."

Frustrated by her own nervous system's apparent shutdown, Brennan closed her eyes and concentrated mightily on moving the musculature of her mouth. "Wha' 't drug you giv' me."

He straightened. "Haldol."

An anti-psychotic with sedation effects. It made her stupid and slow. She would be angry if she wasn't still so trapped in the nightmare. Anxiety is a known side-effect of haloperidol (she could have told them so, were she not currently under its influence); but at the moment it was an equally potent result of finding herself at such an extreme disadvantage. She could barely think, or move.

The door opened then to admit Deputy Director Stark, who jerked his chin and sent the other two agents out. The door clicked shut and she was alone (practically paralyzed) with an enemy, a heartless traitor.

"Booth."

Glancing around the room, the man Booth had thought was a friend took a shuffling step forward. "Doctor Brennan, I know you're scared but I need you to listen to me."

"Booth..." Shaking her head was more an idea than an accomplishment, the muscles of her neck twitching uselessly and managing only to nudge her chin sideways a little. She was still terrified but wouldn't show it; powerless but wouldn't admit it; reduced to begging but not too proud to do it. "Want Booth."

If her love of Booth had leaked into her tear-filled eyes, maybe it would move him a little. His eyes seemed warmer now than they were before. Stark leaned low, whispering in her ear. "Listen!"

Trying to move her arms, to push him away, she found she was bound to the bed. Both wrists tied down. Panic must have exploded in her visibly because Stark's demeanor instantly changed from urgent to soothing.

"You've been restrained," Stark explained. "This is for your protection. It's the only way. The _only_ way. Do you understand?"

Enunciating with excruciating care, she tried again. "Pleaze, where'z Boooth?"

"My hands are tied, too. This is all I can do. Booth is safe." He turned to go, apparently unable to stand seeing her helpless tears. "You're on a 24 hour psych hold. They'll release you in the morning."

She began screaming before he got all the way out of the room, and the second injection arrived within ten minutes.

~Q~

**Friday**  
**17:47 hours**

The door opened regularly at first, usually to admit a nurse who would walk around her bed and record vital signs. As the chemically induced fog cleared a second time Brennan noted the schedule shifting from every fifteen minutes to every thirty, then once again to only once per hour. Then the door opened once for a meal that she awkwardly ate alone, left-handed. Once for a janitor to remove and replace the waste-bin liner. He shuffled in, warily skirting both the shackled patient and her question.

"What hospital is this?" She wasn't in the same room as before.

"They told me not to talk to you." He gestured to the door left ajar.

Just outside two new FBI Agents were standing at attention, one facing the hall and the other watching the janitor with a jaundiced eye now that he'd gone ahead and spoken to her anyway. So the janitor hurried through his assigned task with no further interaction, and though Brennan was not a fan of idle chatter with total strangers, the silence enveloping her threatened to create the state of madness that had already been attributed to her.

They must have moved her to the psychiatric ward, but was it the same hospital? For all she knew it could be another state.

At first she had tried asking everyone who entered for help: where was Booth, please call Angela at (and she would recite the phone number), or at least the Jeffersonian. What drugs had they administered to her? She even asked what day it was. But no one looked at her and no one spoke and now, seeing the reason why and knowing no one would defy the FBI, even the epically stubborn Temperance Brennan gave up.

With no hope of either escape or eliciting further information regarding her own fate or Booth's, Temperance turned inward in a long-ingrained habit that she'd first cultivated in an abusive foster home. Once the screaming and arm waving began in that horrid house, some small part of her always slipped away. All they would see was her eyes open and stabbing the ceiling, her emotions shut away behind a shield of seeming indifference. The door opened and closed, she sensed them moving in and out, but she no longer reacted. This was how things went, for the next five hours after she woke the second time.

So when the door opened late that afternoon, she didn't bother looking. Still staring stoically at the ceiling, the shuffling steps of someone older (heavier, male) didn't register except to tell her it might be a doctor this time. Not that it mattered.

None of them spoke to her.

"Sweetheart, oh God!"

Except this man did and he was her father, and that mattered very much. A sob of relief broke the latest stoic shield she'd taken to hiding behind. "Dad!"

He moved in to stand beside her and despite his comforting pretense she could clearly hear his distress. "Tempe, they'll only let me stay a few minutes, and only because I'm immediate family."

"Where's Christine?"

"She's with Angela. Angela called me, when you didn't come back. It took us this long to figure out what happened to you. And to Booth."

Blossoms of panic burst in her anew, her words spilling out in a rapid stream at the reminder of what had dammed them up in the first place. "They've arrested him, Dad. They wouldn't let me see him, they say he murdered FBI Agents, but they weren't! There was no warrant. They were heavily armed, they cut the power and the phone lines—"

"Shhhh. I know, Tempe," he soothed. Tenderly, Max brushed back her tangled hair and smoothed her brow like she was still his little girl. As if he were still big enough and strong enough to make it better with just a touch and a few words. "This is how it starts. If they can't intimidate you, they destroy your reputation."

As far as she'd understood it, there had been no effort at intimidation. Booth's caution over the promotion she had attributed to his reluctance to accept change and retreat from fieldwork but now... She'd first become aware of the danger at the Senate hearing (was it only yesterday morning?!). For her the nightmare began with the spilling of top secret information from Booth's military past that came in the form of an accusation, one that had derailed Booth's career. One that he was duty-bound and honor-bound to leave undefended, in deference to an oath he'd already given.

They knew he would be forbidden to defend himself.

That's when she'd begun to realize the risk but Booth must have known longer. Recalling the change she'd already seen in Booth at that moment in the courthouse stairwell, the way her husband had turned rigid and relentless and yet had refused to go public with what they had, she shuddered with shock at the realization that Booth was not exactly surprised when the hearing turned against him.

"Dad, he knew this was coming."

He'd _known_. He'd withheld information from her. He'd stockpiled C-4...

And Max Keenan did not look surprised or distressed either, only grimly determined.

"I've only got a couple of minutes. They say you're suicidal." She wasn't thinking of taking her own life — no, if anything, Temperance Brennan was on the verge of becoming homicidal. Astonishment strangled her retort and it died on her lips because he was still trying to explain how the nightmare was spreading, infecting everything. "They say you're refusing to cooperate in your treatment."

Fury and fear, two of the three four-lettered 'F' words that most aptly described her state of mind but Brennan settled on a fourth and much longer word: frustration. "No one is even speaking to me! There _is_ no treatment."

"Your friend Doctor Sweets is working to get the psych hold lifted but so far it looks like you're going to be stuck in here until tomorrow morning. Cooperate, but don't say anything to anyone, okay?"

She nodded, suddenly exhausted. "Do you know where Booth is?"

Shadows darkened his eyes. Max Keenan glanced uneasily towards the corners. "We can talk more freely tomorrow. There are things I need to tell you."

"Why can't you tell me now?"

The door opened and one of the agents announced, "Time's up."

Max smiled sadly. "'Cause I'm out of time."

"Dad!"

"Sweetheart, it's probably better that you don't know what's happening. It'll only make you crazy for real."

"Please!" She didn't know what she was begging him for, aside from the fact that another twelve or more hours of being locked down in lazy isolation loomed like torture. Even under the best of circumstances, Brennan had never cared for laying around.

(Booth hated her habit of rising early even on a Saturday morning. In their early days as a couple, he'd taken to pinning her to the bed, plying her with kisses and promises of pleasurable rewards if she would just loiter a little longer with him. He usually won her over. For several months she spent long Saturday mornings in bed with Booth but once Christine was born late mornings were rare once again, almost unheard of in the home they'd built together.)

Thinking of that made her think of home, and thinking of home helped channel her thoughts more productively than either fretting over forced inactivity, or mourning what was missed or what her husband might have hidden. Freeing Booth from the frame trapping him was still her first priority. She told her father, "There's evidence at the house."

And her father stopped at the door, his posture the very definition of that sort of resigned stiffness that looked like another nerve being hit. Something he'd hoped she wouldn't bring up. "Not anymore."

Then he was gone.

She was alone.

Alone again and wondering what had he meant when he'd said it, so softly: "Not anymore..."

Missing evidence. Or worse, fabricated evidence.

Framed.

Booth being prepared.

_"You kept C-4 in the garage?!"_

Her father's warning from two years ago.

_"Once the system turns against you..."_

With nothing but these thoughts and suspicions skirling in her head, Brennan lay bound and helpless while whispers of the past scratched under the unbearable tinnitus ringing in her ears. Was that a side-effect of the sedative drugs, or a result of the acoustic trauma from the gunfire that happened only hours ago? Acoustic trauma from a shooting they were implying had been one-sided, when Booth went on the attack against agents of the Federal Government.

Serving a warrant.

What kind?

Could Stark be right?

Had Booth lied to her...?

_He wouldn't lie to me,_ Brennan's heart insisted. Except, she knew he had kept her in the dark before. When Pelant told him to decline her marriage proposal. When the FBI wanted him to play dead for two weeks. _No, that was Sweets._ What if it wasn't...? Tears stung and with her hands bound she could only let them fall. _No, I trust Booth. They're framing him._

Just like she'd been framed, once.

Pelant had framed her, but he wasn't working for the government; Booth was being framed, by the very government Pelant had claimed he was trying to bring down. And how had he first forced himself to their attention but by placing a corpse at the feet of the Jeffersonian (so to speak). Did that make Pelant one of the heroes and not one of the villains?

Squeezing her eyes closed against the traitorous turn her thoughts had taken, Brennan blamed her environment and current predicament for inducing what was surely a form of insanity. To think Booth might have withheld information. To think Christopher Pelant was anything less than pure evil...? Perhaps she belonged here in the psychiatric ward, after all. There is often a very fine and delicate line between genius and madness and for all intents and purposes, she'd been thrust rudely across it.

Ironic that she could truthfully claim the Federal government had driven her to this, but then perhaps she wasn't the only one. Pelant had claimed the same.

With messages scrawled in blood.

_"This won't stop."_

_"What are you hiding?"_

Bodies blown up from the inside out...

Encrypted files, encryption keys, a genius trapped in a psychiatric ward...

"Oh my God!" Brennan's eyes snapped open, her horrified exclamation flung into an empty room.

~Q~

* * *

**Author's Note:** Before you lovely readers start panicking (or throwing rotten fruit at the screen), please remember one thing: perception is shaped by what a person knows (as well as what they _don't_ know). We all know Booth is an honorable man, but we don't know _why_ he made the decisions that got us to this point. That is what I'm wildly curious about, as well as helping Brennan find the heart of the Hydra so Booth can be exonerated.

**Episodes referenced:  
**The Crack in the Code  
The Recluse in the Recliner


	3. Questions

**Author's Note:** Thanks to all of you who are reading, watching, marking as favorites and especially for reviews. :) I'm still working on how to get Booth out of jail, but before that I've got to get Brennan out of trouble.

~Q~

* * *

_**Arabesque**_

* * *

_A complicated decorative design made with many lines that curve and cross each other._

* * *

**3\. Questions**

* * *

**Saturday**  
**09:00 hours**

She was sitting on the wrong side of the table, back to the wall and facing the door.

"We just have a few questions."

After spending the night locked away in the psychiatric ward, Brennan found herself being released but not into her father's care, nor into the care of her friends. Two FBI Agents appeared at her hospital room door and escorted her in an official vehicle back to the building where Booth used to work. She sat in the back, finding that the doors were locked and even though she was not handcuffed, she also was not free to leave.

"When can I see my husband?"

The two agents sat between her and the door of the interrogation room, partners just as she and Booth had long been partners. They glanced at each other, sharing the same kind of symbiotic non-verbal communication that she and Booth shared, the sign and signature of a long and fruitful partnership.

"Agent Booth is accused of murdering three FBI Agents."

Glancing between them, staring between the vertical bars of their arms and straight on through to the door they would not allow her to pass through, she remembered her father's advice. 'Cooperate but don't say anything.'

"You can not compel me to testify against my husband."

"Doctor Brennan, we just need you to fill us in on what happened at your house." Softly spoken. Oh, so reasonable. How many times had Special Agent Seeley Booth and his partner lured unsuspecting suspects into a false sense of ease using a similar tactic. She knew the method, knew they would mine through everything she said in search of snippets that might incriminate. Errors she might make, traps she might fail to see in time to avoid them.

She glanced over at the 'mirror' that was actually a window; glanced up at the ceiling where she knew a microphone and camera were hidden behind a smoky bubble of glass. Part of the Miranda warning that Booth always recited upon an arrest drifted through her mind. _Anything you say can and will be used against you..._ and her father's words: 'don't say anything.' Anything she said might be used against Booth.

It didn't help that her head was throbbing and a lingering sense of anxiety painted her every thought with paranoia. Both discomforts could either be blamed on the Haldol from yesterday, or the hell she found herself enmeshed within still, today. Either way, Brennan decided she wasn't up for questioning.

"I request an attorney."

"You aren't under arrest." The younger one, laughing a little at her foolish distrust. "We just have some questions."

"Then I'm sure you won't mind waiting until my attorney arrives." She forced a saccharine social smile, insincere.

"This isn't necessary," the older agent insisted.

Oh no, this was absolutely necessary. Brennan shifted her gaze toward him, unable to avoid giving her own unease away even though for the moment her resistance was reduced to a politely worded request. "May I call my attorney?"

"Doctor Brennan, refusing to answer these questions can be construed as impediment of an ongoing investigation."

"I have refused nothing," she pointed out. Reasonably, she hoped. "I have the right to legal counsel during questioning and I intend to exercise my right before we proceed."

"But you aren't under arrest."

"My husband is. As far as I am concerned, that means I am as well."

The partners shared a frustrated glance, then the older one turned and made no effort to hide his questioning glance towards the mirror. He must have received instruction through his ear piece, because he grimaced and nodded. "We'll allow you to make one phone call."

Brennan leaned forward, her steeled gaze slicing through his deception. "If I am not under arrest, then my phone privileges should be unlimited."

"We just want to get this over with, and I'm sure you would like to get home to your daughter."

The threat hung between them, unmistakable.

Her eyes held his pinned, unyielding. Finally he lifted a hand and waved her off. "You can use the phone in Agent Booth's former office."

One that was probably tapped...

Climbing wearily to her feet, Brennan skirted the table and glared blindly through the mirror concealing whoever was really in charge. Wondering if she should try Caroline Julian first or call her father for advice, Brennan made it to the exit in a semi-exhausted daze. Though the last dose of Haldol was now nearly twenty hours past its expiration date, a residual grogginess clung to her.

This floor was Booth's floor. She slipped around the corner, intending to walk down the hall to Booth's empty office and was surprised to feel fingers wrapping around her arm and a quick tug into the break-room. The door shut and she spun, hands coming up to ward off an attack but then she stalled. It was a friendly face peering back at hers.

"Agent Burns?"

"Charlie. I only have a second."

"I thought you were transferred to—"

"I was. Look, Doctor Brennan, I know Booth didn't kill FBI agents."

Though she knew it was impossible for him to assert Booth's innocence as a fact, the sentiment behind his irrational statement was a welcome source of warmth. It sounded so much like something Booth would say that tears came out involuntarily to blur her vision even further. "You can't know that empirically. You weren't there."

His earnest gaze took a nosedive but he shook his head and repeated, "I know Booth. A lot of us, we don't believe it ... we're just not sure how to help."

"Booth would want you to tell the truth."

At that, his hesitance continued but his gaze lifted and he spoke distinctly. "The truth is dangerous right now."

Sensing a warning in his sudden and very unexpected appearance as well as in what he'd said, Brennan stepped back and considered her own plight. If she told the truth, it might be used against Booth, and if she lied it would surely be used against _her_. Her father's warning was essentially the same as Charlie Burns' warning. 'Cooperate but don't say anything.' Frustrated, desperate enough to trust Booth's former colleague, she huffed a helpless declaration of entrapment. "They're asking questions."

"You don't have to answer them."

It surprised her, being reminded of that fundamental right by someone who was ostensibly on the other side of the law as of today. Perhaps this was a demonstration of Booth's rapport and reputation with his own men, that at least a few of them would aid her in slowing the juggernaut of a Justice Department intent on the crucifixion of one of its own.

"They can summon you before a grand jury," Charlie Burns went on, "even arrest you for contempt if you refuse to speak, but they can't force you to answer. It takes time to draw up a summons."

"How long?"

"At least a day. They'll have to assemble evidence showing why your testimony is required."

"What can I do in a day." Thinking out loud wasn't her norm, nor was lamenting a lack of options. Brennan eyed the coffee urns longingly, wondering if a dose of caffeinated stimulant would ward off the Haldol halo that still seemed to circle everything in a haze. "Can I have some coffee?"

At the abrupt and quite unexpected request her ally looked startled, glancing uneasily at the silver-sided pots containing the FBI's dangerous decoction. He couldn't help but offer another warning. "Doctor Brennan, you're probably used to better coffee than this."

"Desperate times, desperate measures," she quipped uncharacteristically. "I believe I'm not feeling well. Caffeine treats headaches."

Charlie Burns smiled faintly. He poured her a cup of the black and syrupy brew, passing it with an apology. "Sorry if it's rancid."

Having trouped through the mountains of Tibet surviving on "campfire coffee" boiled straight with coarsely mashed beans and then settled with eggshells and cold water, Temperance Brennan figured she could handle anything the FBI poured into her cup. Figuratively speaking. Literally also, in this case. She braved a sip, her nose wrinkling involuntarily at the acrid taste (because the FBI urns percolated, boiling the coffee and releasing acids without the alkaline neutralization of clean, crushed eggshells) and when it didn't kill her she swallowed again more heartily.

Even acidic coffee was no help against the Haldol but it might provide another benefit. If her head didn't clear, well ... other means of escape might present themselves. Illness, for example.

She shuddered, draining the cup too fast to really taste it and then stood contemplating her options. She'd never called in sick before, not even when she was quite ill, and wasn't quite sure how to go about it. Fortunately, the Haldol still held her in a slightly shaky state and Brennan found it was not difficult to tense her muscles just a bit more, just a bit tighter so her gait would appear unsteady.

"Thank you," she said to Charlie Burns, who was moving to take the cup.

"You want me to walk you back?"

He was doing this for Booth, she guessed. The quite unwelcome and unnecessary chivalry was precisely what Booth would want and it caused in her another unwelcome emotional lapse. For a moment she almost cringed at the thought of letting Agent Burns or any of her adversaries seeing her awash in weak, feminine tears, but then again ... she remembered Angela saying something quite a long time ago.

_"Booth is brilliant at pretending to be stupider than he actually is most of the time."_

Could she pretend to be weaker than she was...? Most of the agents here didn't know her other than by reputation. Could she lull the opponent into a false sense of superiority, letting them think they were fully in control while she took full advantage of their inattention? She blinked slowly, decided it might go against the grain but this was indeed a desperate time. Charlie (being one of the few who did know her) clearly was not fooled, and yet he seemed quite willing to help her establish the charade. So she nodded. "I would find that ... beneficial."

It's like being undercover, Brennan informed herself.

They left the break room together and she found that increasing the tension in her muscles caused her to trip and stumble every few moments. It was physically taxing, all the better for the moment because it capitalized on her preexisting exhaustion. Acting ill wasn't terribly difficult when she felt so weak and dizzy to begin with.

They rounded the corner and ran into Sweets. Literally.

"Whoa! Doctor Brennan, there you are! Where did you go? I heard you were in for questioning. Are you okay?"

The rapid onslaught of comments and questions caught her off guard, so much so that she nearly forgot the not-quite-feigned illness. Charlie Burns tightened his fingers around her medial epicondyle, pinching it painfully and making her wince as discomfort shot from her elbow to her wrist. "I'm not—" the fingers twitched on her. "I'm not feeling well."

Stepping closer, Sweets reached for her. "I can take her, Agent Burns."

Charlie, oddly, did not release Brennan's elbow. A territorial clash loomed, causing Brennan to jerk her arm free instinctively. "I'm not a package to be passed back and forth!"

"That's not—" Sweets defended.

And Charlie Burns stepped towards her again, even while apologizing. "Sorry Doctor Brennan. You just seemed unsteady for a minute there. I was afraid you might _fall_."

Their eyes met, finally and truly. She realized she'd never really looked at Charlie Burns before. He was still slightly overweight with new brush strokes of grey at his temples and small lines creeping around his eyes. Those umber eyes looked at her like Booth's did, radiating warmth and concern. He was FBI. Sweets, too.

Booth had stopped trusting everyone at the FBI. She swallowed heavily, mindful of her own fear ... because she realized Charlie had effectively prevented her from making any phone calls and brought her back here, armed only with a defense of weakness that risked jail.

The trembling wasn't feigned any longer. A queasy uproar had begun in her belly, brought on no doubt by the coffee and stress, and when forced to decide who to trust, she was stalled in the middle of the hallway. Charlie was Booth's old friend but Sweets was like family.

Before she could manage any kind of proactive stance the door to the interrogation room opened, revealing the older agent who'd brought Brennan in for questioning and who now dove straight into the fray. Now it felt like three against one. "What's going on out here?"

To her consternation, Charlie spoke. "I was assisting Doctor Brennan, who isn't feeling well. Assuming she's not under arrest, it might be best to escort her home."

"She looks fine to me," the older agent refuted.

"I saw her nearly faint just outside the break room."

Brennan's white-faced shock at the bold lie only served to back up the claim, making even Sweets take notice. "Actually, she doesn't look so good..."

The nausea had increased substantially, pinching painfully within the confines of her mandible and pooling saliva in her mouth. Desperately, her hand slapped to her mouth as she lurched towards the women's toilets and feared she wouldn't make it in time.

As she pushed through the door she heard Sweets roaring on her behalf. "What are you thinking, questioning her like this? She's sick! Don't you realize the side effects of Haldol can last for _weeks_?"

Then the door shut and she was in a stall, heaving up the coffee. And choking on tears because she wondered how Sweets knew about the Haldol.

~Q~

* * *

**Scientific Note:** It's true about the Haldol. The "minor" side effects include dizziness, headaches, anxiety, nausea and vomiting, and muscle tremors; these side effects can linger for a few days and up to a month, depending on dosage.

**Episodes referenced:  
**The Past in the Present  
The Recluse in the Recliner


	4. Rescues

**Author's Assurance:** This story is spoiler free to the best of my ability (I'm actively avoiding them) and also about 99% likely to be AU by the time the season premiere airs in the United States. The only way to help Booth is to reveal the patterns of corruption and Brennan may turn to some very shocking allies in her quest to do that.

~Q~

* * *

_**Arabesque**_

* * *

_A complicated decorative design made with many lines that curve and cross each other._

* * *

**4\. Rescues**

* * *

**Saturday**  
**09:43 hours**

"You gonna be sick again?"

The concerned question could barely be heard over the rumble of her AMC Gremlin and Brennan briefly considered answering truthfully (that the driver's erratically changing vectors were the latest source of her gastric distress). Having heaved up the hospital's bland breakfast and the coffee, having quite effectively sicked herself away from the prying questions, the need for illness had passed. Yet she still felt the trembling and nausea and it must have shown. Rolling her head to the left, she found Caroline Julian watching her with the same concerned, motherly regard that had whisked her out of the J Edgar Hoover building like a Cajun cyclone...

"What is all this, a party outside the ladies room? Move out of the way when a lady wants by!"

"Uh, Doctor Brennan's in there."

"Well so what? A lady has business to attend to, what business is it of yours?"

"Well, she's..."

"She's what? Spit it out, I don't have all day."

Sweets must have said it, just loud enough that his voice carried but between the closed door and her ongoing regurgitation, Brennan couldn't distinguish any distinct words other than "throwing."

"Outta my way!" A roar like a lioness and then the door to the toilets whooshed open. "Oh dear Lord, what is this? What is this? Oh, this is all _wrong_!"

From her position crouched weakly at the edge of the toilet, with the faint scent of urine and Lysol triggering emesis again, Brennan sobbed and gagged because the sympathy was harder to take than all the suspicion and fear combined.

Water running, and soothing Southern murmurs as cool and wet pressed against her face and warm, motherly hands brushed her hair back out of harm's way. "Here now. What did they do to you?"

"Haloperidol," Brennan managed before another gut-breaking wave of gastric acid made her cough and spit more of the foul-tasting stuff out. "Nausea ... is a side effect."

Caroline Julian's never-ending stream of soothing stopped, utterly dammed up by astonishment. "They gave you Haldol?"

"At the hospital." Risking a relapse, Brennan pushed herself partially upright and leaned her head against the seafoam green wall of the toilet stall.

"And then they brought you here, knowing you'd be sick like this?"

"For questioning. It made me dull. I didn't realize ... when I asked Agent Burns for coffee..." Because she didn't trust anyone, Brennan was not about to admit that in fact she had hoped on the coffee doing this very thing. (Though, perhaps not so quickly or so thoroughly. She blamed the muzziness of her mind for miscalculating how much to drink.)

"That it would make you sicker than a dog? But they sure were counting on the dull, weren't they." Because drugging the genius probably was the only way to get past that rapier mind of hers. Someone sure knew what they were doing. The prosecutor's expressive mouth flattened into a grim squall line as she beheld the proudest of women kneeling on a bathroom floor, nearly defeated by underhanded cheating tactics.

And that was when the cyclone began. It swept Temperance Brennan up into the whirling winds and out into an aging yellow car before anyone could think to tame the force of nature otherwise known as an enraged Caroline Julian.

"You all ought to be ashamed of yourselves! This poor young thing is sick, her home is destroyed, her husband is in the hospital and you drag her down here like she's a criminal? I don't care that he's under arrest (and that injustice is just ... beyond the _beyond_!), but if she can't be with him then she ought to be with her family. And where do I find her but tossing her biscuits in the ladies room while you all stand around out here wringing your hands. I thought better of your brains, Charlie Burns — giving her coffee? What were you thinking! Lance Sweets, make yourself useful and take her other arm. You just go right back where you came from, Thomas Williams. I know your Mama wouldn't approve of this kind of conduct. Keeping her here is taking you lower than a toad in a dry well. No! No, don't you say it. Doctor Brennan is not under arrest. I'm taking her home."

Mercifully, the mental fog was clearing a little as a gale-force wind blew into Brennan's face. There was no air conditioning in the Gremlin. _Twin fifties_, Caroline had called it when rolling the windows down vigorously. _I'm from the __**real**__ south, where it gets hotter than the hinges on the devil's door._ For the last few minutes, fresh morning air had begun to calm the queasiness into a more manageable state of mere acid reflux, which was still extremely unpleasant. And exacerbated by the car's jerking movement. Another peristaltic wave had churned within as they turned a sharp corner, causing her to press a distressed fist over her sternum and wince._  
_

And that in turn had prompted another question from Caroline. "Should I pull over?"

"No. I believe the worst has passed," Brennan decided. Whether because she'd emptied her stomach already or because the escape from FBI custody was proving a balm to the rest of her disrupted nervous system, she thought she might survive the trip. "Thank you."

"Oh, don't thank me," she grumbled, checking mirrors and jerking the car sideways yet again. Brennan finally began to wonder if Caroline's erratic driving was an attempt to evade a tail. It seemed so, judging by the numerous times the older woman glanced behind them and continued to take an excessive number of turns. "This is just the beginning, Cherie."

"Where are we going?" Her own home it definitely was _not_, as she'd been tartly informed by the prosecutor the moment they got into the little yellow car. The FBI had commandeered the crime scene, turning everyone else away and whatever evidence was retrieved was now out of reach. "You appear to be changing vectors more frequently than necessary."

"Somewhere that is _insect free_."

Unable to decipher what that meant, Brennan rolled her head back to the front and sighed. "I need to talk to Angela."

"You got somethin' on your mind? Or somethin' up your sleeve."

Resiting the urge to check her wrists for something hidden up her shirt sleeves, Brennan recalled it was an idiom denoting sly trickery. She wasn't certain of the appropriate answer. "Did Angela get all the files decrypted?"

"Nope. Someone hacked her. She had to shut it all down in a hurry, but she did manage to salvage most of the data from Foster's files."

One section of files had proven particularly difficult to decrypt, the code sophisticated and complex. Brennan nodded. "I think I may know who encrypted it. If I'm correct, then we already have the decryption key."

So it was most certainly on her mind, but Brennan wasn't sure if it was also up her sleeve. It came to her last night in the psychiatric ward...

~Q~

**Friday  
****18:23 hours**

With her father having left hints of tampered evidence in his wake, she couldn't help thinking of how Pelant had framed her (by tampering with evidence), yet he wasn't working for the government. Then she'd recalled her murdered friend, Ethan Sawyer, who while locked in the psychiatric ward had spoken of the evil that "looks like a baby." And everyone thought he meant Christine, but in hindsight he might have meant Pelant.

She closed her eyes against the acoustical tiles and florescent lighting, shuttering conscious memory to bring back photographic imagery, a snapshot of the past. Brennan's genius hinged on superlative memory, the ability to capture and preserve a single moment of observation and store it wholly, without memory mediation and in such a way that she could recall it back to visibility at will. As if she were standing in the past, Brennan saw it still, a still-life. A photograph.

White characters on a black screen.

The code was written vertically, a larger base with an uneven floor, narrowing to a sharp apex, with most of the characters appearing to be either Greek or Phoenician. Brennan felt her eyes rolling under the lids, slicing up and down the columns, seeing it as it had appeared that night in the lab. Ethan Sawyer's code, inscribed in saliva in the shape of Newton's triangle. And Doctor Sweets, who had provided the key to translation.

Gobbledygook and psychobabble, math and psychology mashed into numerical genius.

Her breath quickened. _"Reborn into innocence."_

Her own thoughts echoed back: To think Christopher Pelant was anything less than pure evil...?

To think that being killed was part of the plan...

Arms jerking against the restraints, she gasped as more of the conversation filtered back.

_"This triangle," Sweets continued, "it's a scientist's effort to, uh, distill human motivation into a rational construct, right?"_

_"That's … one way to put it," Brennan agreed cautiously, loathe to accept psychology but knowing she'd gone to Ethan for that express purpose._

_"There are three sides to a triangle."_

_Brennan laughed. "Your understanding of geometry is not very advanced."_

_"Well, I wasn't finished. There are three sides to Pelant. One: the base is his constant rebirth into innocence, you know, the face that he shows the world."_

_"Okay," Angela prompted, also a bit skeptical but willing to listen.  
_

_"Side number two is his secret personae."_

_"What does that mean," Brennan interrupted._

_Angela guessed, "The killer, the secret murderer."_

_Sweets indicated his agreement with a snapping of fingers and a finger point drawn in Angela's direction. _

_Curious now, Brennan inquired, "And side number three?"_

_"Hodgins provided me with that yesterday. Pelant wants one of us to kill him."_

And Booth did. He'd goaded Booth, striking closer and closer until—

Until Booth shot him. _Just like he wanted._

And the trail of the Ghost Killer, the trail that Pelant led her to, had brought them all to this, brought her here to lay helplessly in a psychiatric ward as truth and realizations slowly drove her mad. Except, she wasn't insane. Brennan knew she was locked up in here because she was dangerous. Booth was framed because he was dangerous.

Her father's warning from mere minutes ago: _"This is how it starts. If they can't intimidate you, they destroy your reputation."_

Ethan...

What if Ethan wasn't crazy, either? What if he was drugged into insanity and then killed because he was still too dangerous?

What if she and Sweets and Angela had misunderstood that Ethan's code could expose the true center of the triangle, which was not Pelant but a corrupt Federal Government with a hidden, murderous side; every time any man or woman of pure intent got too close, they were destroyed and the government was reborn into innocence.

Kennedy.

Nixon and Watergate.

Reagan and Oliver North.

Brennan pulled in another sobbing breath, her mind spinning as possibilities sputtered and flamed like a candle taken out into the storm. The surest sign of insanity was seeing patterns where none existed, but these patterns were undeniable.

Could it be possible that it wasn't Christopher Pelant who was most afraid of Ethan Sawyer's code? Could it be possible that Christopher Pelant was _not_ the one who had killed Ethan Sawyer and framed her for her friend's death? If she found the way to crack open the conspiracy consuming her husband, would that ultimately lead to Christopher Pelant's rebirth into a relative innocence?

Perhaps Pelant's death was meant to be a sacrifice like Prometheus, who stole fire (knowledge) from the gods and gave it to mankind. And what did Pelant give her but the twisted trail of murders that led her to tentacles of corruption all twirling into infinity. And it started with Inger Johannson, a girl whose body was blown up from the inside out.

Could it be she'd spent months as a fugitive because of someone _other_ than Christopher Pelant...?

~Q~

**Saturday**  
**10:26 hours**

So it was easy to be a bit shocked on this Saturday morning when she found Caroline Julian pulling into the parking lot of a cheap motor-in type of motel, one like the endless string of cash-only dives she'd inhabited with her father and Christine while playing the part of fugitive. Light bulbs burned out on the 'vacancy' sign, paint peeling off the cinder-block structure, rusting iron railings and chipped concrete steps ... it was all so very dispiriting, as if the past two years were rewound.

Only Caroline's matronly presence changed things enough to assure Brennan she wasn't having one of her nightmares.

They clomped up the trembling concrete steps, the railing biting coarsely into her palm as she hauled herself higher. At the top, they followed the railing wrapping around the outside to a room tucked away behind a grumbling ice machine. Caroline rapped impatiently against a shut door.

Faintly, from inside, Brennan heard a childish chatter and then, "Mommy!"

The door opened.

Christine rushed at her legs, Max just behind and shifting his eyes from Brennan to her companion.

"Did you have any trouble?"

Caroline grimaced. "'Course not. You think this is my first time in the pepper patch?"

He smiled, showing the charm that had gotten him out of more scrapes in his life than either woman could ever guess. "I know a worthy adversary when I see one."

And Caroline smiled right back, her eyes sharp as obsidian blades. "Touché, Max Keenan. You're the only one who ever got away."

Eyes open wide, Max asserted, "there was reasonable doubt."

_Not in the slightest_, the prosecutor's rolling eyes seemed to say. She watched Max's daughter carry the clinging toddler deeper into the room, knowing it was Temperance Brennan's intervention alone that had foiled an otherwise airtight case. Lord help anyone who ended up against that girl's relentless heart, for once it started driving that brilliant mind it was 'game-over' for everyone who stood in her way. "I would have had you if she hadn't tossed herself on the altar in your place."

Having entered the shabby room wholly now, Caroline let Max Keenan close the door with a finality that told her she'd crossed more than one threshold today.

"You didn't charge my daughter with murder when you had the chance."

"She didn't do it."

Stepping closer, lowering his voice, Max nodded. "That's why I know you're not corrupt, Ms. Julian. You didn't get rid of her when you had the chance. Three times, you could have done my Tempe harm, and you didn't..."

"I only go after the guilty ones." She turned to watch the bittersweet reunion between mother and child, worrying that the beloved father of this little family was months away from a similar tender scene. "As soon as I know who's responsible for this fine mess, you bet your bottom dollar I'll be going after them."

That was assuming, of course, that one of these two wily Brennans didn't kill them first.

~Q~

* * *

**Author gleefully rubs hands together:** Now that Brennan is back with Max and Christine the crazy is about to explode ... from the inside out. Oh, the FUN that awaits as we wade deeper into past plotlines. _*Psst! that was a clue!*_

**Episodes referenced:  
**The Crack in the Code  
The Past in the Present  
The Future in the Past


	5. Old Dogs

**FBI Note:** _OPR_ stands for _Office of Professional Responsibility_. It's the FBI's version of internal affairs. I'm guessing the men in black that Brennan found in Booth's hospital room were agents from OPR.

~Q~

* * *

_**Arabesque**_

* * *

_A complicated decorative design made with many lines that curve and cross each other._

* * *

**5\. Old Dogs  
**

* * *

**Saturday**  
**11:13 hours**

Tempe was ill.

He could see that the moment her moon-white face had appeared in the motel doorway. The stilted way she swooped and scooped up her daughter then retreated to one of the beds told him more than she probably realized. She moved stiffly, as if unsteady or in pain. Even if the silent and immediate retreat didn't give him a clue, Caroline Julian's concern would have. Her tart verbal combat covered tiny little glances and meaningful eyebrows raised only to be tossed in Tempe's general direction ten times over. The portly prosecutor wanted Max to notice.

No worries there, he was painfully aware of his daughter's condition.

While Tempe was distracted with Christine's prattle ("Two Bad Mice and Benjamin Bunny for bedtime stories plus pancakes for dinner, Mommy!"), Caroline finally leaned forward to whisper what had her so worried. "Someone had her injected with Haldol at the hospital. That boy wonder, Dr. Sweets, warned OPR not to question her so soon but _someone_ was in a hurry."

In a hurry to nail down the coffin on Seeley Booth's career.

"Are they going to charge her with anything?"

The prosecutor turned a speculative eye Tempe's way, assessing possibilities from the insider's perspective he'd never had before. The wheels of justice whirred noisily, demanding grease, but in the end the easiest route would be taken. Caroline knew this better than anyone. "Depends on whether they want to make a lot of noise, or make something stick. At worst, obstruction and accessory. At best ...? They just want her for questioning."

Max nodded, showing that he understood and would adjust his agenda accordingly. "Can you get to Booth?"

The prosecutor winced. "Not easily, due to my questionable associations." She rolled her eyes in Tempe's direction and her affection was clear, gruff sarcasm notwithstanding. "I may already be _persona non grata_ in the Justice Department. I can either prosecute Agent Booth or help his friends, but I can't play both sides, Max Keenan."

And well he knew it. Asking for her help had been a risk, but the number of people on Tempe's team that Max could truly trust numbered less than five and since Caroline was on that critically short list ... well, there hadn't been much choice. But he was not willing to risk her life or her position as prosecutor. "Then don't. Toe the thin blue line and prosecute Booth, just like you did with me. At least that way he'll get a fair hearing."

"I just got done telling you I can't play both sides and then you go and tell me to play both sides anyway."

"I'm not telling you to play double agent." No indeed, Max was not willing to risk anyone and would cut them all loose if it came to that. Stepping even closer, lowering his voice to a whisper, Max issued an order he didn't want Tempe to hear. "I'm telling you, when the ship goes down save yourself. I'd hate to see you drown."

Stunned, she took a step back repeated it faintly. "You mean abandon ship."

"_All_ of you. They won't hesitate to kill." He held her gaze fiercely, making sure she understood exactly what risk she faced. "But for now while you're still onboard, I need your help with one last thing..."

She thought she might be able to manage it.

With plans in place to rendezvous in three hours at the King David Memorial Gardens Cemetery just outside of Falls Church, Max Keenan shut the door on Caroline Julian's promise of punctuality. From the subtle sigh emanating behind him, he guessed Tempe was relieved to finally be alone where she could let down her guard and rest, but when he turned, it was only to be confronted with his daughter's replenished thirst for knowledge. It seemed Tempe intended to unwind with a cup full of questions.

"Why there?"

A casual shrug was his reply, while he considered the most desirable order in which to tell her a great many painful things that she would soon need to hear. It was not a task he looked forward to and truth be told (only when he was forced to, of course), Max hated the truth just about as much as his daughter adored it. "Same system you used with Angela. It worked before."

"Pelant eventually caught on."

"Yeah, well, I'm counting on most people not being as smart as that crafty little bastard."

They had plenty of smart foes who would challenge them in the art of evasion in the short term, however, so he announced it was time to leave. Tempe, still seated on one of the beds and nestled next to Christine, received this news with utter dismay. "Why?"

"We're safest on the move."

If he'd had any doubts she wasn't operating at peak performance (no thanks to Haldol), those doubts were erased when she thoughtlessly noted, "No one knows we're here."

Max softened it with a smile. "Your friendly Ms. Julian knows."

Intellect damper than usual...? Perhaps. But that left Tempe's temper all the more easily accessed. Anger splashed and soaked him as she spat. "You don't trust Caroline?"

Unable to stop wondering if it was the innuendo against an ally who'd just rescued her, or the idea of going anywhere at all that had her up in arms, Max hastened to calm at least one of the potential sources of agitation. Caroline was most certainly not the person he wished to evade. "No, believe me, I do have confidence in your prosecutor or she never would have been the one to bring you."

That little revelation of prior arrangement skated right past her, evidently, for Tempe latched instead onto the suspicion that he wasn't telling her everything. (She was correct, of course.) "Then why are we leaving? That implies a lack of confidence."

"Ms. Julian knew that we'd be leaving as soon as she dropped you off here. She's a smart old—"

"Dad!"

"...darling angel." He grinned as if to disarm her.

Tempe scowled. "That is not what you intended to say."

Max had begun gathering up Christine's meager collection of favored toys already, stuffing them into a suitcase standing by just as quickly as Tempe undoubtedly had done two nights before. But where Tempe's speed had been born of urgency, Max's was born of efficiency, he and Ruth having long ago achieved total mastery of the mechanics involved in rapid departures with young children. He worked silently now, noting the similarity to that long ago afternoon when he'd begun packing while both of his girls watched and wondered.

Ruth had argued with him that day, while two year old Tempe clung to her and seven year old Russ was swinging blithely out in the back yard. Max straightened to look at her, his daughter who so resembled his wife, who took after Ruth in ways that both soothed and scourged his heart. She was still waiting on an explanation, just as her mother had.

"I don't want anyone knowing where we are. It keeps them safe, too. We've been through this before, Tempe." But he didn't mean her, he meant Ruth. He'd gone through it with Ruth. Same decisions, same questions.

"Why are we doing it again?" Despite the dissension and the illness she couldn't quite hide, Tempe pulled herself fully upright and began helping get Christine ready for another road trip.

Resigned, Max shot the next salvo in what was turning out to be a life-long campaign. "Because history keeps repeating itself."

"Brennans being fugitives?" It was a sarcastic offering, bearing notes of resignation and wry self reproach since Tempe knew better than to try and exempt herself from their most prominent family trait: a tendency to end up on the wrong side of the law by hook or by crook.

"We were Keenans then. Before that..." He trailed off, not ready yet. Soon. "There are many things about me that you don't know."

"Then why won't you just tell me, Dad? You and Booth, you keep things from me."

"We're protecting you."

"Well _stop_!" Angry and independent, just like Ruth at her finest.

Christine (Ruth's namesake in a roundabout way) whimpered an objection to the tones of discord.

"Tempe..."

"I don't need protecting."

Reaching for his granddaughter and chucking her under the chin, Max looked down into that dear little face combining all the best elements of himself and his beloved wife, of his daughter and the man into whose care he'd entrusted Tempe's safety years ago. Christine chuckled, dodging the tickles with her father's fine reflexes. "You know why I've always liked Booth for you?"

As far as diversions went, it was a spectacular failure due to carrying the over-protective theme a little too far. Her eyes narrowed at the suggestion that her father should ever have a say in who she chose for male companionship.

Catching her displeasure the elder man smirked, not above pressing a few feminist buttons now and again. "He's just like me."

"No he's not!" Tempe's outrage at the comparison rang out loudly, noisily. "Booth isn't ... like you!"

The strangled halt came at the cost of Christine whipping her head around, eyes wide and wondering as her mommy stumbled over Max Keenan's greatest fault. Declaring her beloved Grampa Max a criminal was a bad move and even Tempe knew it.

Oh, but he had more in common with Seeley Booth right now than she could ever comprehend. She didn't see it, naturally, because she didn't have all the facts at her disposal. Max stilled her with a touch to her arm, his tired old eyes boring into hers. "I'm not the man you think I am."

Gazing back, her lovely silver eyes more a mirror of Max than they'd ever been of Ruth's and that razor-sharp wit as well, Tempe drew a sharp breath. He could see confusion hidden beneath fear. Her whisper was sharp like a blade. "You've killed people."

"So has Booth."

Questions and fears came alive in her, all the strange little hints he'd been giving her finally hitting home. Booth was a former military sniper, and Tempe knew Max had sharp-shooter qualifications. For that matter, so did she. Accuracy in aiming was yet another trait that ran in the family, as well as tilting at windmills and unfailing loyalty even when evidence piled up against a loved one. "What aren't you telling me?"

"Did I ever tell you how I met your mother?"

Taken off-stride by the change in topic, Tempe stepped back and frowned. "No."

"You never wondered?"

"Mom said you met at work. I never really thought about it." Bitterly, she added, "I guess I should have, since you _infiltrated banks_ after hours." That was the Christine-cleansed version of a far more venomous epithet: 'bank robbers.'

The dig had hit its mark, but Max didn't let her see how much the gouge hurt. Instead he coolly reminded her how to make a clean getaway. "Wipe down all the surfaces with a damp cloth."

Though surprised at the reversion to fugitive habits, she began to obey before bothering to point out it wasn't necessary. "I didn't touch anything, Dad."

"Christine and I have been here a few hours. Wipe it down, Tempe."

Having perfected this task during her months on the run, she went through the room quickly, using a wet wash cloth to clean every surface capable of receiving a latent fingerprint and being especially cautious to double back over light switches and doorways. "The TV?"

"Everything. Just to be safe."

A flourish as he zipped Christine's suitcase shut. Max hefted the case and the toddler, shouldering the more precious one and gesturing for his daughter to open the door with the damp cloth. She did, darting back into the bathroom to hang it. He halted just outside the entrance, glancing back to make sure both room keys were in plain view on the desk and, seeing both still shrouded in their paper sleeves (they hadn't touched them) he nodded in satisfaction before turning to his daughter.

"You know we were bank robbers with rap sheets, and yet you never wondered about the lack of fingerprints."

He sensed her stopping in bewilderment but Max strode forward with the key question seeded and ready to sprout. Likely she didn't know what he meant yet, but she was brilliant and she would figure it out.

~Q~

* * *

**Episodes referenced:  
**The Judas on the Pole  
The Killer in Concrete  
The Stargazer in the Puddle  
The Santa in the Slush  
The Verdict in the Story


	6. Confessions

**Author's Defense:** Some of you are worried about Booth and wishing this author will let you see how he's doing. Right now, he's still in the hospital as this is only the second day since he was shot.

Meanwhile, there are at least three other good stories out there now that might cover Booth's experiences in prison: FaithinBones has _**Maximum Security**_, Delia84 has _**Pieces**_ and AmandaFriend has _**The Lies in the Truth**_. (I'm not reading them yet to keep my mind clear for writing this one but if _you're_ not reading those stories yet, you definitely should! All three are excellent writers.)

As for this tangled story, Booth is in the hospital, Brennan has ideas, and Max has a story to tell. We are officially AU, starting now.

**FBI Note:** _IAFIS_ stands for _Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System_. Most states run their own AFIS databases but they can choose to submit fingerprints plus profiles on arrested suspects to the FBI in hopes that a hit from another state will help identify an unknown criminal or a perpetrator who left fingerprints at the scene. _WitSec_ stands for the Protected Witness Security program operated by the US Marshalls. Most protected witnesses are criminals who testify against criminals who are bigger and badder than themselves in exchange for immunity from prosecution for their own crimes.

~Q~

* * *

_**Arabesque**_

* * *

_A complicated decorative design made with many lines that curve and cross each other._

* * *

**6\. Confessions**

* * *

**Saturday**  
**12:26 hours  
**

"Listen to me carefully."

He said it so sharply that she was compelled to obey.

They'd gone out into the rural byways, skimming along country roads until he stopped just short of Dulles at Little Difficult Run Stream Valley Park. (Possibly one of the oddest descriptions ever applied to a single geographic entity, causing Brennan to wonder what in its history had caused the small park to accumulate so many names.) With Christine happily playing a few feet away, the two adults shared a blanket spread out under overhanging trees.

Between them a hasty lunch purchased at a small Mom-n-Pop diner was set out, but only Max and Christine had eaten any of it. Brennan picked at the crumbling, stale bread, knowing her father was right about the need to feed her body and mind but her heart refusing to release a path into her stomach. Anything she attempted to eat stalled about halfway down.

Not being able to see Booth, especially, had her innards twisted into knots. Awake or asleep, every time her eyes closed images of him bleeding scratched under the lids and the only thing that ever changed was the level of light in her nightmares: sometimes it was dark with the stink of cordite drifting around them and other times harsh florescent lights turned his face faintly green while careless strangers sang Karaoke in the background.

"Can't I just call the hospital," she begged for the third time that afternoon. What if Booth was awake and worrying about her? What if he needed her? What if they were lying to him the way they'd lied to her? The fears wormed through her mind, spinning cocoons large enough to shove every other thought aside until all that remained was her growing worry over Booth.

"We've been over this: you can't call in until we know it's safe. For now I've got someone checking on him for you. If he's awake he'll get the message that you're okay."

"Who is it, Dad?"

"Someone I trust."

Once again that's all he would say, and she knew it was futile to push any further because he had yet to yield any more than that. Finally giving up, she'd tossed away the picked-over sandwich and sighed. "Fine then, I need to talk to Angela and Sweets."

And that's when Brennan's father had spoken so sharply that he grabbed his daughter's full attention.

When she looked up at his sharp directive to listen, Max spoke again. "You are not to trust anyone inside the FBI."

"I know, Booth already—"

"Tempe."

She stopped, letting the words fall away unfinished. It was rare that he took that tone of gravity with her, the only times being a long-ago message on her answering machine warning her to stop looking for him, and the night when he informed her Pelant had found him at the flower drop. Both times he'd warned her of life-threatening danger with that dire pitch and now he was doing it again.

"No one."

Swallowing down a gush of bilge shooting up from below the constriction near her heart, she tried to understand what about mentioning Angela and Sweets had brought this sudden seriousness about. "Not even Caroline?"

Acclimating to such an extreme level of paranoia was proving rather more difficult than she'd expected, almost like evolving backwards. When she met Booth she didn't trust anyone. For years Brennan had been urged to open up, trust more, develop relationships and now that she had done so it was not easy to reverse the progress. Her father pursed his lips, gazing upwards into the leafy canopy that ensured no digital monitoring from satellite cameras while he answered. "Not even Caroline, but not for the same reasons."

"Well then, what reason?"

"The time may come when Ms. Julian has to prosecute Booth. The less she knows about our activities, the more useful she is to us."

"How could Caroline working against us possibly be useful?"

"Well, just knowing one decent person is on the inside is reassuring, don't you think?"

Brennan gaped at her father, flummoxed that he could be so glib about a death penalty murder charge. That was the harsh reality Booth was facing, a potential death penalty if the charges of murder went to trial. Recalling Caroline had prosecuted her own father (and nearly won), Brennan couldn't imagine why he would propose they take such a risk with Booth's future. Caroline was too good, too talented. No, they wanted a lesser lawyer taking up the FBI's case against her husband, Brennan was certain of that.

But when she said it out loud, her father shook his head in disagreement. "If it goes to trial, you want Caroline Julian to prosecute him. She'll play by the rules, that's something we can count on."

Nodding slowly, considering, she accepted his decision with a sigh. "What about Sweets?"

Max settled himself down, an oddly relaxed pose as he propped on one elbow and avoided her question with a peculiar comment. "Two months ago Booth came to me with some concerns."

What had happened two months ago... Brennan's mind flew backwards, stumbling over proficiency exams and Booth's stellar performance. He'd tested as exceptional, (at her urging to try for more than merely adequate because she knew he _was_ exceptional and thought it high time the FBI acknowledge what a fine agent he'd always been). His score in the ninety-eighth percentile was 'genius range,' and Booth had come back the proud holder of the FBI's equivalent of a MENSA invitation. They wanted him to head up a field office opening soon in Germany.

Then had come news (from Sweets) that the FBI was reviewing Booth's military records, and Booth had grown restive.

Reluctant.

Worried.

And this subtle reminder came courtesy of having asked her father about trusting Sweets.

Sensing her confusion morphing into caution, Max help up a hand and held her off. "Someone in the FBI was looking over his military records and he was worried about the promotion he was being offered. Well somehow, Booth made a connection between ... certain events. He looked me straight in the eye, Tempe, and asked me something point blank."

"What did he ask?"

"I'll get to that later."

Eyes narrowing, she shifted into a position that would permit her to glare at him more fully. "I'm tired of secrets, Dad!"

Weariness pushed the words out so slowly she had little choice but to accept them. "So am I, Sweetheart."

A breeze shuffled the branches overhead, shimmering sunlight around them in their shifting patch of shade. She shivered, wished she'd have thought to pack some of her own clothing before running from a house that was no longer hers. _I didn't think that far ahead,_ Brennan mourned. _I didn't think that I'd be leaving for the last time..._

Her breath caught as she replayed that night. Booth had certainly thought ahead, had procured and stored C-4, and had sent her straight to her father.

It must have become evident in her eyes, the realization that Booth and her own father had colluded somehow, and somewhat recently. Leaning forward now, Max spoke urgently. "I can't tell you everything, and for the same reason you can't tell any of this to your friends. If you care about them..."

"Lie to them?" Bitterly, she laughed because it was all coming full circle. "The way you and Mom lied to Russ and me?"

"Yes, Baby. The way I've lied to you."

Lies of omission...

Her whole life was built on his lies, and twice she'd endured the falling apart of Max Keenan's house of cards.

Up and away, she scrambled up off the old tatty blanket that had materialized from the back of their stolen car. Max had lifted a late-model Toyota Camry, the second most popular car on the road (making it blend in) and third most frequently stolen car in the nation (most typically they were stolen for parts, so police would start looking in known chop shops, not obscure parking lots). But he'd also taken care to pick a family car, complete with a car seat and picnic blanket.

Her father was nothing if not resourceful.

Her father, the thief. Her father, the conman. Her father, the killer. Liar. Fugitive. Savior.

Wiping tears and storming forward toward the trees, she stopped in front of blurry brown bark and looked up to delicate green needles spreading overhead like lace. Some of the needles on the tips of the branches were so soft and yellow she knew they were freshly sprouted, this year's growth. The tree itself she recognized from an ancient injustice: Socrates, sentenced to death for corrupting the youth of Athens, had died by ingesting hemlock. (Not this kind of Hemlock but somehow this tree had acquired the same name.) Some historians speculate he was scapegoated because of his association with the Thirty Tyrants, a ruthless oligarchy that had briefly overthrown Athens' democracy and systematically destroyed anyone opposing them.

Fingering the coarse bark she considered powerful heads tucked into various crevices, a rule of the few. Over two thousand years later history is repeating itself: there is an oligarchy hidden within our Federal government, and it destroys anyone opposing it.

Her father had tangled with it in the past, when they had murdered an agent and framed a civil rights activist for the death. It was the same case that sent her parents into hiding, the same case that had restored the truth to her, a case that had, in many ways, cemented her partnership with Booth.

It was the first time he'd been accused of misconduct and cast out of the FBI.

Damn it.

She couldn't stop thinking of Booth. _I can't do this without him, but he's lied to me.  
_

Booth and her father. _"We didn't want this for you..."_

Tears spilling, the pain growing, and grip of terror that had never once let go of her since the Congressional hearing now whispered paranoia in her head. She needed Booth, his heart and intestinal instincts, but all she had was suspicion and lies. No one to trust but her father, telling her Booth had asked him a question.

Point blank, like shooting a gun.

What did he ask?

_Booth, what did you hide from me...?_

Hearing a step behind her, a small snap from a twig crushed, she turned to find her father's pained face and placating hands. "Tempe..."

"What did he ask you?"

The hands fell, no longer reaching, because he was looking down at them. Palms up, fingers loose, Max studied the tips and then looked back at his daughter with an expression she couldn't quite name. Pride, of a sort, but also the same sort of reverence that Booth often wore when entering a church. "He asked me who burned me."

The fingers wiggled again.

Booth had used such terminology once, long ago on a case with a confidential informant. "Who _burned_ you?"

"He knew I'd been an undercover agent."

Under ... cover. Brennan's battered mind attempted to assemble the verbal clues and found it difficult without first overturning a rather fundamental premise. "You were a bank robber, Dad. I saw the arrest records..." Trailing off as her father's question from an hour ago struck her mind, she made the connection.

_"...and yet you never wondered about the lack of fingerprints."_

When Booth finally arrested Max Keenan for the murder of Robert Kirby, no fingerprints were found within the FBI's files or databases. No fingerprints were anywhere — she recalled Booth complaining about it.

Her world spun.

"Your Booth is an intelligent man, Tempe. He suspected as soon as he saw Ruth and my arrest records because there weren't any fingerprints in them. But he _knew_ ... He knew when my prints didn't turn up anywhere in IAFIS."

Knew what? Unnerved now, she shifted a step backwards and demanded an explanation. What did a lack of fingerprints cause her partner to know? And why hadn't he said anything in all these years?

"That someone had either removed them from the records, or planted the criminal records in the first place."

In so many ways he was right. This man standing before her was not the man she'd known in childhood. She couldn't help the bitterness enveloping her questions. "Well? Which was it?"

"Both." He shrugged, giving her a sheepish smile. "Deep cover, it required a forged criminal history."

"Even Mom?"

Wincing, Max glanced away. "That happened afterwards, after someone burned my cover and killed Gus Harper."

"I don't understand, Dad. Why did Mom have a criminal record if she wasn't a criminal?"

"They give you one chance to go along with it. If you turn it down you're shut out but if you try to shut them down..." He shook his head, knowing Booth's fatal mistake was the same as his own, the same as many a good man or woman forced to make a choice between power, survival or honor. "I tried to blow the whistle, just like Gus Harper and that was the end of me. Since I still had some friends, I was lucky to get a warning they were coming after me, just like they came after Booth. I wanted to leave, leave your mother and you kids safe and just get the hell out of there but she refused, just like you refused to abandon Booth."

Proudly he smiled, remembering his brave wife and their brave daughter. "So I made a phone call, the last one I ever made as a law-abiding citizen. The guy who arranged my cover offered to make one up for my wife on the sly. And then, we ran."

Incredulity kept her silent for so long that Max finally ran out of words and Temperance Brennan realized she had run up too many questions in such a short span to even settle on the first one. Still, somehow the word "Who...?" spilled out, and incomplete though it was, Max took it as being worthy of pursuit.

He prompted her. "Who, what..."

"Who burned you?

Brennan thought back to the man Max had killed in her apartment, an Assistant Director of the FBI. Robert Kirby had been a former Marine Sniper and an agent with the ATF back in 1978. And Kirby was the one who had fired Booth right after taking a shot at Russ. "Was it Kirby?"

"No. It wasn't Kirby."

Well then, who else... The old pair of murders returned to her recollection, because right before Kirby — whose murder she was barred from investigating — there was another.

"Was it Garrett Delaney?" The former FBI agent was found burned and symbolically posed, 'spilling his guts' on top of a safehouse known to harbor FBI informants. Despite the nearly identical methods of death and dismemberment, she knew her father had never been charged with that prior murder. And why not, for wasn't an identical MO reason enough to charge him...? "You killed him too."

He sighed, rubbed his nose. She recalled Booth teaching her to spot tells in suspects, body language that suggested untruths. Max rubbed his nose (a Pinocchio move) but didn't implicate himself. He remained silent.

"Booth arrested you for murder, Dad. Why would he do that if he thought you..." It didn't make sense. She closed her eyes, leaning back against the poisonous Hemlock.

"He wanted to give me a chance to mend things with you. And, I guess, he hoped I would come out with it at my trial, that I would have to tell the truth to defend myself."

But he hadn't broken his silence. All through the trial, Max Keenan sat stoic like Socrates.

"The fact that I didn't? Well. That told Booth the man who burned me was still alive."

He's still alive.

Still heading the hydra.

"Who is it?"

"Tempe..."

"This man has destroyed my life at least twice! I think I have the right to know, Dad."

"I don't know who he is. There were so many, and at least one of them was working with the WitSec program in the US Marshalls. That's how they found out we'd forged your mother's criminal records."

Witness protection, U S Marshalls... She gasped.

Memories once again blasted through her, of a sniper and a US Marshall; of protected witnesses killed by a sniper who claimed he'd been set up. A sniper who operated by changing his identity. And another man who killed in order to draw attention to the FBI's most notorious protected witnesses and seemed to accomplish complete identity changes on a whim, even when held in FBI custody. One of them had died but the other was still alive. "Dad..."

Noting his daughter's sudden horror, Max turned to quickly spot Christine safely playing among the pebbles. "She's fine," he soothed.

"No, there's ... there's someone I have to talk to."

"Who?"

Jacob Broadsky, but not yet. No, first they had to get Foster's files ripped open. The answer had to be in them, and Brennan was certain that her friend Ethan Sawyer's code would prove to be the encryption key.

"Angela, first. And then, maybe, Sweets." She started to push past him, intending to pack up and return to work. Now. Immediately.

But he held her back. "No."

"Dad..." She growled it out, her own furious warning. Things were coming together and she thought, at last, there might be a way to confirm the identities of the men who'd come to kill Booth. Broadsky might know them, or their names might be in the encrypted files. Either way, she intended to overturn absolutely everything because Booth needed her.

Urgency pounded so loudly inside her that she barely heard what he said.

"Not Sweets."

This was what had set off the warning in the first place.

She stopped, shocked like electric current, because she'd wondered about it.

Rubbing his brow tiredly, Max blinked again at the Hemlock tree that had been supporting his daughter's weight. "I don't know who the ringleader inside the FBI is. But I'm afraid that your friend Sweets is working for him."

Uneasily, she bit her lip and looked down at needles littering the floor beneath her feet. Needles, Haldol, Sweets.

Experiments, lies.

_No._ Trying to force the suspicions back, Brennan reminded herself to proceed logically. Look for evidence, build a case. There's evidence that he's innocent. Drawing a steadying breath she pinned her father with a piercing gaze and challenged him to provide evidence of guilt. "Why would you think that? We've known him for years. He lived with us. He loves Christine."

Seriously, he grabbed her arm and held her still. That tone was back, the warning one. "Booth. Booth is the one who warned me to keep you away from Sweets."

~Q~

* * *

**Author's Note:** I know some of you will hate me for implicating Sweets but there is a very damning pattern that needs explaining. Hopefully Sweets has a good explanation but for now, Max has suspicions and he's not trusting anyone connected with the FBI.

**Episodes referenced:  
**The Woman in Limbo  
The Judas on the Pole  
The Knight on the Grid  
The Bullet in the Brain  
The Future in the Past

**Update on the Delay:**

_**I know it's been ages!**_ It's not writer's block so much as a huge time crunch, and Fan Mail came first. This story is on an unofficial hiatus while I'm finishing Fan Mail, which means I'm still taking notes and tinkering on plot in the background. In fact, I've already completed a couple of chapters beyond this one. My goal is to get a fewe more chapters of this story completed and then once Fan Mail is done I'll start posting again. Once you see another chapter go up, know that _Arabesque_ will continue uninterrupted until finished. Total projected is about 12 chapters.


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